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gwabbit LLC Founder and President Todd Miller shares his thoughts on “virtual officing” and innovative ways of conducting business

I rarely meet people before I hire them.

Seriously.

The reason why I lead off this installment of Virtuality with this particular factoid is because, in some 12 years of virtual officing, this is the one that has consistently drawn the greatest surprise from others. Actually, I would never have given my blind recruiting a second thought if not for the shock and awe reaction I typically receive in response to this particular revelation.

Why do I pass on face interviews? I think the better question is: “why conduct face interviews?” My rationale is this: if the employee is not going to have a public face, what do I care what they look like? My primary interest is in results. If an unattractive person gets the job done, that’s terrific. In 12 years of virtual officing, I can say with confidence that there is no correlation between looks and job performance.

Of course, there’s much more to our virtual recruiting practices than what doesn’t meet the eye.

For example, we not only don’t care what our employees look like; we don’t care where they live either. When we recruit new employees, we don’t constrain our net to a particular area, we draw from the entire 50 states. This enables us to search for talent in less competitive places, which substantially drives down our payroll expense, while driving up our retention. For example, we have successfully recruited from small college towns with little local industry. Graduates may love the town, but may find the local pickings slim. They’re often willing to give up some premium in compensation in order to enjoy college town life rather than pick up and move to the big city and swim with the sharks.

Another factoid: I never look at a software developer’s resume until they’ve passed a test

When we place a job ad for a software developer, it’s not unusual for us to receive hundreds of applications. Over time, I found that there tended to be an inverse relationship between a software developer’s job-hunting skills and their development skills. The slicker the resume and the smoother the interview, the worse the code. After getting burned a few times, I asked my developers to assemble a test to probe the skill sets we needed from our recruits. Our job ads informed prospective employees that their applications would be screened by test results. Overnight, our world changed for the better. From the hundreds of respondents that applied, only a dozen or so would bother to take the test. From that number, only 3 or 4 would deliver satisfactory results. Suddenly, instead of spending dozens of hours vetting resumes only to be disappointed with the eventual hires, I might spend 30 minutes reviewing resumes, another hour or so in interviews, and I was almost always happy with the new additions to our team. It’s worth noting again that I have never met a software developer before hiring them.

Job jumpers need not apply

Early in my virtual management career, I was confounded at the number of resumes I received from job hunters who, although relatively young, had already had scores of jobs on their CV. It was rare for these people to last a year at a job, yet it did not seem to be a particular impediment to their career. People kept hiring these job jumpers despite the long odds against them being around to celebrate a single anniversary. Why invest in someone who is going to leave, either voluntarily or involuntarily?

Then it finally dawned on me: the people who are hiring them are job jumpers too!

These managers may rationalize their hiring behavior – perhaps they actually believe that those who exhibit loyalty and longevity are complacent or even lazy, when the reality can usually be filed under one of the following categories:

* The employee left voluntarily for a better opportunity – i.e. a shortcut to better compensation and status
* The employee left voluntarily because he/she just didn’t like the job
* The employee left involuntarily because he/she did not perform well on the job

Which of these would you prefer as your dream employee?

Of course, there are situations where things just don’t work out – the company downsized, the job was a bad fit, etc. However, if I see a consistent pattern of short-lived job experiences, it instantly hoists a big red flag for me. It costs money to recruit and train. Moreover, there is enormous opportunity cost associated with the organization trusting an employee to be on the job and supporting their proportionate weight of the company workload. It is extremely disruptive to an organization (and, therefore, costly) to replace an employee in midstream.

No adult supervision required

As I’ve written previously, one of the principal objections to the virtual office is management’s inability to physically supervise employees. My response to this is: why would you want to hire an employee that requires supervision?

Duh.

Professionals will deliver professional results without the additional overhead of constant supervision. If you treat employees like children, you can expect childish behavior in return.